


Go

by KlayterMcCabe



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Amputation, Gen, Implied/Referenced Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-13
Updated: 2015-06-13
Packaged: 2018-04-04 05:54:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4127463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KlayterMcCabe/pseuds/KlayterMcCabe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dark little AU proposing a different ending for that scene in "Turn, Turn, Turn" where Garret threatens Coulson, May, and Fitz. As HYDRA takes the Hub, Coulson and May escape. Fitz doesn't, and Ward has a choice to make.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Go

The last thing Ward does after the explosion is get Skye out of the Hub.

"I've got Simmons on the line," she tells him. "Coulson and May are with her and Tripp. Fitz is missing." She pauses. "Coulson says to get out of here. HYDRA's taken the Hub."

"Then we can't go," says Ward. "We need to stay and fight." The little needles of adrenaline he feels when he hears that phrase—HYDRA's taken the Hub—inject a certain fierceness into his tone that he wouldn't have allowed in calmer circumstances. Skye fails to notice.

"Coulson says to go," she repeats, panic threading her voice. "We're outnumbered and outgunned." She pauses. Ward can hear Simmons screaming something on the other end of the comm.

"Oh shit," whispers Skye. "We're leaving Fitz."

"For all we know, Fitz is HYDRA," says Ward. His voice is calm again. The tamped-down soldier voice that Coulson's team knows and trusts.

"HYDRA," Skye repeats. " _Fitz_." And she manages a modicum of her normal scathing tone at the very idea.

"You want to go into a suicide mission against orders to rescue a guy who might be a traitor, and put the rest of the team in danger in the process?"

Skye is quiet. Ward doubts his voice has carried over the comms, but Simmons goes quiet, too. Maybe Coulson is delivering a similar lecture. Maybe May just knocked her out to prevent her from becoming a further liability. No, that's not how Coulson's team works. Maybe Simmons just needed a moment to pull herself together.

A very cold pair of realizations washes over Ward, cancelling out his victory and adrenaline all at once.

He wants HYDRA to take the Hub.

He doesn't want HYDRA to take Skye.

"You go," he says. "I'll take care of Fitz."

"You can't do it _alone_ ," snaps Skye. "What about all that suicide mission stuff you just said? Why would that apply to _us_ but not to _you_?"

"Because I'm a fucking S.H.I.E.L.D. specialist," he says. "I'll cover you and the rest of the team while you get out. Maybe HYDRA took the Hub, but they didn't take everything. The more S.H.I.E.L.D. survivors you can cobble together, the stronger the force we'll have. Tell May and Coulson that when I have Fitz, we'll rendezvous." Months of flirting and professional attention and the fact that he's her S.O. pay off: Skye believes what Ward's saying is reasonable.

"How will we know?" she asks.

"S.H.I.E.L.D. specialist," Ward repeats. "Don't find me, I'll find you." And he offers her a smile he's practiced in the mirror, one that he considers cheesy but that is generally well-received by women. She puts one hand on his upper arm and squeezes.

"Good luck," she murmurs.

Ward lets her have the last word, something he's learned that women often want but rarely get. He covers her 'til she's out of sight, and trusts May and Coulson to get her out of the Hub alive.

As he walks away, Ward starts spinning a story about how he lost Skye in the explosion, and by the time he makes it back to Garrett, he already half-believes that that's what happened.

000

Ward waits for an order from Garrett before he makes any attempt to see Fitz. He doesn't ask about him, and though he and Garrett discuss Coulson's team at length, their talk is all about how to neutralize the ones that escaped, not what to do with the one they have. Maybe this is a test, or maybe Garrett just _assumes_ that Ward won't care about a former "colleague." The former possibility is irritating, the latter is comforting. They spend half a day ransacking the Hub, and half a day rigging layers of traps to destroy it and whatever sorry S.H.I.E.L.D. team shows up first to do damage control. Only after they've fled the scene and convened with a group of Sitwell's people does Garrett mention the engineer.

"I assume you're aware we acquired half of FitzSimmons," Garrett says, voice friendly and conversational, which is how he sounds when he's actually being friendly and also when he's on the verge of murdering someone.

"The Fitz half," says Ward, matching his jocularity with almost scientific exactitude.

"Wondering if you could work on him for a little bit. He's still expressing remarkable reluctance to join us, and I thought you might have some hands-on insight that our experts aren't bringing to the table."

So Ward goes.

He assumed Fitz would've been worked on a bit, but he didn't know Fitz had been shot. He's on the floor in a basement cell, leaning against the wall with his legs straight out in front of him. Fitz is paper white, with red-limned eyes and a feverish cast to his expression. He doesn't look alive until Ward walks in and Fitz recognizes him.

"Oh thank god," Fitz breathes. "I knew someone would come. How's Simmons? Everyone else? Did Coulson and May make it out, or are they here, too? Oh thank god." He tries to pull himself up the wall to stand up, but doesn't make it very far.

Ward is surprised Fitz still thinks they're both S.H.I.E.L.D. Not explaining Ward's betrayal seems like a failure on the part of Fitz's handlers. Personally, his first foray into making Fitz switch sides would've involved a more subtle approach than the blunt application of physical pain.

"Fitz," he says. He uses the voice he only uses when no one's watching him, the dead drone he thinks his thoughts in.

Fitz flickers.

"You're the only one here, Fitz. Everyone else got away."

"Thank god," says Fitz for a third time. "We've gotta get out of here, Ward. I cannae... I cannae hold up like this." His legs have been wrapped up well enough to stop the bleeding and hedge off the threat of infection, but knees are delicate and complicated. It doesn't take a bio-chem genius to know that two days of neglect could be enough to make this injury a permanent one.

"When you start working with HYDRA, you'll get morphine, Fitz. You'll get a surgeon whose job it is to make sure you walk again. Shit, you'll even get a bed instead of being dropped on the floor."

"What?" breathes Fitz.

"You're a precision instrument," says Ward. "And for that reason, you should be well-treated. But if you're not going to work for HYDRA, you're not going to work at all. Precision instruments are easy to break."

"Ward, what are you doing?" Fitz's voice is hoarse with the crying and screaming he's done since they kneecapped him, and since they did whatever else they did to make him such a husk. "What did they do to turn _you_?"

And here Ward allows himself a little smile that leans towards the sincere.

"It doesn't matter _what_ they did," he says. "Just that if they found a way to turn me, you don't stand a chance."

This strikes Fitz at a different angle than he expected. "I know they're listening," he says. "But the others'll come for us. You know they will."

Ward gets a lesser version of the same cold feeling that made him take Skye to safety. It hasn't occurred to Fitz yet that Ward might have been a plant from the beginning. He still thinks they're in this together, and his easy trust makes Ward want to be worthy of it.

"Let's shortcut this whole process," says Ward, crouching over Fitz. "I'm going to save you a little bit of time and a lot of personal agony. You think you can hold up against physical pain long enough to escape, or long enough to be rescued. But you can't. The only real question is, when you finally give in, whether you'll be in decent enough shape to serve HYDRA as a scientist, or whether you won't be good for anything but use as a pawn against Coulson's team. So let me offer you a little bit of agency." Ward puts a hand on Fitz's thigh. The touch is well above Fitz's ruined knees, but Fitz still flinches. "If you start working for HYDRA, I'll take care of Simmons. Here's a list of things HYDRA won't _ever_ do to her: Kill her. Torture her. Rape her. Perform medical experimentation upon her person. You can't save yourself, Fitz. It's too late for that. But you can still save Jemma."

Their faces are very close together. Fitz is crying.

A few years ago, Ward would have said that Garrett was a professional above all else. He took pride in his physical strength and tactical intelligence and social manipulation, but all of those skills were the means to an end. With time, Ward has begun to feel that Garrett is drifting. That he's become someone who enjoys the spread of pain and fear, who relishes the feel of being powerful without seeking to use his power in a meaningful way.

If Garrett is watching, he'll appreciate the tears.

"If you _don't_ join HYDRA," Ward continues, "Simmons will be the new you. How long do you think she'll hold out in this cell? Longer than you? Or shorter? If you're still alive, I'm sure you'll get to watch part of the process."

Ward moves his hand from Fitz's thigh to the back of his head and strokes his hair. Fitz meets his eyes, and Ward stares at him. It's meant to be a frightening expression, but Fitz sees something else in it. His face hardens, and he nods.

"Okay," he says. "If it will... If it'll protect Simmons."

He's looking very hard into Ward's eyes, trying to communicate something.

"Excellent," says Ward, pulling away so abruptly that Fitz's head hits the cell wall. Obviously Fitz is up to something; obviously he's going to attempt escape and all manner of sabotage. But for now, he'll get morphine. For now, Ward will keep his promise, and do everything in his power to keep Simmons safe. He puts her in a subheading under Skye and thinks it will be doable.

He's been a loyal soldier for a long time, and this is what he wants for his reward: two women, kept out of the fray. One man, coherent and whole.

000

Fitz loses his left leg after all, amputated just above the knee joint. Ward doesn't know if this was a medical necessity or insurance of the basest kind that Fitz is incapable of running away. When Ward finally sees him up and about the lab, Fitz is a drawn figure in a wheelchair, too raw to attempt a prosthetic. There's a bruise on his cheekbone, but otherwise he's in reasonable condition, and the ghost of a smile crosses his face when Ward walks over to the Holotable he's toying with.

"You're settling in," Ward announces. His voice carries in the quiet lab. "Who's hitting you?"

Fitz doesn't look at anyone in particular. "I dinnae have an official HYDRA rank," he says slowly. "Yet other engineers have to do as I say. The dissonance is difficult for lesser minds to handle."

Ward laughs and rests one of his hands on the handle of Fitz's chair. Despite his bravado, Fitz flinches when Ward approaches him, and he eyes Ward's hand with a birdlike panic that's poorly concealed. Still, that he conceals it at all is an improvement. That he bothers to banter is an encouraging sign.

For now, Garrett is keeping Ward's word about leaving Simmons alone, and leaving Simmons alone incidentally means leaving Skye alone. Ward is grateful that protecting Skye leaves him room to protect Simmons and Fitz as well, in his fashion. He'll throw them to the wolves if he has to, but a traitorous part of his heart is grateful that so far it hasn't come to that.

He resents Coulson for being an inadequate leader who failed to take care of his team.

"What are you working on?" he asks Fitz.

"Classified."

Ward laughs, but Fitz's face is serious.

"How can you have better clearance than me when you're not even ranked?" Ward asks.

Fitz shrugs. He looks small, suddenly, and it strikes Ward that he is literally physically smaller, that he's lost the leg and lost weight and lost the sly bitchiness that made him so much fun to beat at board games. Fitz has become a man whose lifelong inferiority complex is finally justified by his current state of inferiority.

Ward reviews a few days of lab surveillance footage, and it doesn't take long to tell that Sepúlveda is Fitz's primary tormenter.

Ward pays Sepúlveda a visit, and afterwards Sepúlveda and Fitz get along just fine.

000

Ward's never taken an interest in R&D before, and he isn't willing to start now, so he's out of the loop on Fitz. He takes the lack of news as a sign that Fitz is keeping his head down, and congratulates himself on getting Fitz transitioned so smoothly. The next time he visits the lab Fitz is still in a wheelchair, but he's acquired a certain deftness in maneuvering it around the lab. A shorter workstation has been set up for him, as most of the existing ones require the user to stand.

"Ward," says Fitz briskly. "I'd like to show you something."

He leads Ward to the corner of the lab where a project the Tanzanians are working on causes occasional blocks of white noise in HYDRA's audio surveillance. Fitz is too smart to believe that HYDRA is unaware of this dead spot, isn't he?

"Ward, I have a plan," Fitz whispers, holding up a tablet full of meaningless equations for the benefit of the video surveillance, which has probably already flagged this encounter as suspicious.

Maybe optimism is what's making Fitz stupid. Maybe hope is nothing but a drain on IQ.

"If you want your plan to work," Ward hisses, "don't tell me a goddamn word." Then he steps out of the corner briskly, forcing Fitz to wheel after him.

Fitz prattles an improvised stream of data at him, as if that was what they'd been talking about all along. Ward doesn't pay the words any mind. Fitz keeps gesturing at the tablet, and Ward finally focuses on it. It takes him longer than it should have to decode the message hidden in the equations:

 _SKYE. SKYE. SKYE_.

Despite himself, Fitz has his attention.

"I'll send you the rest of my results," Fitz is saying. "In hardcopy."

"Whatever," says Ward. "You don't need my approval."

"For old time's sake," says Fitz. Underneath Ward's blank face, his heart is beating cold.

000

The project they've put Fitz on is all about Skye. They're going to bring her here and they're going to tear her apart, and that's unacceptable. Ward realizes that he can't protect Skye from this on the inside; if he wants her safe, he'll have to break with HYDRA.

He'll have to break with Garrett.

Something in him loosens up. Garrett's been losing ground for years, with Ward mourning each lost mile. It will almost be a relief to cut him loose, to enter play as a free agent. All he'll have to do to enter Coulson's good graces will be walk in the door with Fitz in tow.

He does wonder, briefly, if Fitz is playing him. Unable to rescue himself, tricking someone else into doing the rescuing for him seems exactly like Fitz's style.

Ward pays another visit to Sepúlveda, who warily confirms a few details of Fitz's information, answering the questions Ward slips in between bullshit accusations about bullying and a few well-placed body blows. Even if Sepúlveda has the balls to report the encounter—and he didn't, last time—he won't have a clue what the interrogation was actually about.

Ward is so wrapped up in planning his own extraction that he forgets entirely about Fitz's plan, until the building is rocked by explosions. They lose comms, then, in the immediate aftermath, all WiFi and cellular signals. There are gunshots in the distance, and Ward immediately zeroes in on an opportunity. He's halfway down to the lab before he realizes this might be an opportunity that Fitz created. Ward passes a few people fleeing the labs, but nobody else going in their direction.

Fitz is waiting for him, clutching a briefcase full of who-knows-what intel and stolen HYDRA property. Ward starts calculating how he can lose the briefcase without making it look intentional, then realizes that he doesn't have to. If he's breaking with HYDRA, he'll need all the intel he can get.

"Coulson's on his way," says Fitz. "We just need to meet him at these coordinates." The place is a little less than a klick out, a distance that would've been impossible without this chaos to cover them.

Ward lifts Fitz out of the chair, and ignores it when Fitz's breath catches at the jolt to his remaining knee.

"Keep your eyes open," Ward orders, putting a pistol into Fitz's free hand. "If we're challenged, I'm going to drop you, and you'll have to cover yourself as well as you can."

The Fitz he knew before didn't care to handle guns. This one doesn't seem to mind.

"I promised Skye I'd take care of you," says Ward, letting the words leave his mouth without having an immediate agenda for them. Fitz's laugh is bitter.

"Yeah?" he says. "And this was the best you could do?"

"No," says Ward. "But no one else is going to carry you out of here."

Fitz monkeys around to Ward's back, the briefcase pressed between his chest and Ward's spine, one hand on the pistol and one hand clinging to Ward's shirt. If they had time, Ward would prefer some kind of makeshift harness to hold Fitz in place, but Coulson's less than a klick away.

 _Skye_ is less than a klick away.

"Jesus, what are you waiting for?" Fitz yells, really yells, the sound caught between irritation and panic. "Let's go!"

Ward goes.


End file.
